Shotwick House is a large house in Great Saughall, Cheshire

Cheshire

Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

, England. It has been designated by English Heritage

English Heritage

English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...

 as a Grade II listed building.

History

The house was built in 1872 for Horace Dormer Trelawny and designed by the Chester

Chester

Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...

 architect John Douglas

John Douglas (architect)

John Douglas was an English architect who designed about 500 buildings in Cheshire, North Wales, and northwest England, in particular in the estate of Eaton Hall. He was trained in Lancaster and practised throughout his career from an office in Chester, Cheshire...

. In 1907 it was damaged by fire and following this it was rebuilt and extended, the architect again being John Douglas; at this time the owner was Thorneycroft Vernon. In the later part of the 20th century it was in use as a nursing home. Its stable courtyard, also designed by John Douglas, is listed Grade II.

Architecture

Shotwick Park is built in brick with a tiled roof in neo-Elizabethan style. The main front has seven bays with each external bay forming a turret

Turret

In architecture, a turret is a small tower that projects vertically from the wall of a building such as a medieval castle. Turrets were used to provide a projecting defensive position allowing covering fire to the adjacent wall in the days of military fortification...

; the turret on the left is larger and higher than that on the right. Both turrets are polygonal in shape, each with a pyramidal roof having a lead finial

Finial

The finial is an architectural device, typically carved in stone and employed decoratively to emphasize the apex of a gable or any of various distinctive ornaments at the top, end, or corner of a building or structure. Smaller finials can be used as a decorative ornament on the ends of curtain rods...

 and a weather vane

Weather vane

A weather vane is an instrument for showing the direction of the wind. They are typically used as an architectural ornament to the highest point of a building....

. The front has two storeys, other than the left turret that has three storeys. The central bay projects forwards and is canted

Cant (architecture)

Cant is the architectural term describing part, or segment, of a facade which is at an angle to another part of the same facade. The angle breaking the facade is less than a right angle thus enabling a canted facade to be viewed as, and remain, one composition.Canted facades are a typical of, but...

. The roofs are steeply-sloping and are hipped

Hip roof

A hip roof, or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope. Thus it is a house with no gables or other vertical sides to the roof. A square hip roof is shaped like a pyramid. Hip roofs on the houses could have two triangular side...

; over each of the central five bays is a hipped gable

Gable

A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns. Thus the type of roof enclosing the volume dictates the shape of the gable...

. Tall chimneys rise from the roofs.

The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner

Nikolaus Pevsner

Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner, CBE, FBA was a German-born British scholar of history of art and, especially, of history of architecture...

 in the Buildings of England

Pevsner Architectural Guides

The Pevsner Architectural Guides are a series of guide books to the architecture of the British Isles. Begun in the 1940s by art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the 46 volumes of the Buildings of England series were published between 1951 and 1975. The series was then extended to Scotland and...

series describes it as a "fine" house. In Douglas' biography, Edward Hubbard

Edward Hubbard

Edward Horton Hubbard was an English architectural historian who worked with Nikolaus Pevsner in compiling volumes of the Buildings of England...

refers to its "massive solidity and indefinable form, its heavy hipped and gabled roofs and its elaborate use of brick". The architectural writers Figueirdo and Treuherz comment that the house "is an effective composition from a distance, but close to, the detailing is dull".